"But real stars are validated only when those tools consistently hold up in the heat. Anything decreed before that happens is hot air."

Jaime Diaz is suggesting in a Golf World Monday item that the hype machine surrounding young Americans has not been justified. Blasphemy!

More telling was the play of those still around at crunch time. Steve Marino (pictured) had the most conspicuous collapse, giving the tournament away with a bogey on 15, a soft par on 16, and a stabbed five-footer (and a double bogey) on 17. Justin Rose was brilliant on the back nine until he faced a must-have seven-footer for par on the 71st, and Marc Leishman missed a 15-footer on the last as both fell to T-3. Eventual winner Martin Laird was as shaky as anyone, playing the first 11 holes five over par. The Scot rallied late to be the last man standing, but his 75 shouldn't have been enough.

There's no doubt the members of the would-be new order have flashy tools. But real stars are validated only when those tools consistently hold up in the heat. Anything decreed before that happens is hot air.

"BAY HILL'S BRUTISH BUNKERS"

The SI/golf.com gang was joined by Davis Love and they talk about whether the buried lies at Bay Hill are intentional. Remember, the PGA Tour rules staff has a reduced role in how two tournaments a year are prepared: Bay Hill and the Memorial.

Herre: I was surprised to see so many balls plugging in the bunkers. I suppose that was by design. Anyone know if that was new, softer sand in the bunkers? It was an almost automatic bogey every time someone flew a ball either high or into the upslope.

Bamberger: Or the downslope! Arnold wants his course hard. He feels bunkers have been emasculated. He masculated them.

Love: Soft sand has to be a strategy there, that's the only knock on the course the last few years.

"We're running out of time in our allotted broadcast window."

Thanks to Mark Diver for Tweeting this fine moment in Golf Channel history as they signed off from today's European Tour's Open De Andalucia De Golf with Paul Lawrie walking up 18 attempting to clinch his first win in ages. For? The Arnold Palmer Invitational Pre-Game show!

"I'm just not going to hit 3-woods off the tee and play that course strategically the week before Augusta."

Dave Shedloski files an interesting item about Phil Mickelson and Houston next week that should be noted for you Masters pool players who look at the previous weeks play.

"Houston is not going to set up well for me," Mickelson said Saturday after a 3-under-par 69 at Bay Hill Club. "The way the course is set up, you can't hit it more than 285-290 off a lot of the tees. It's not going to be a course where I'm going to play the most strategic and expect to really score well."

The Tournament Course at Redstone is a big ballpark, 7,457 yards, par 72. It would seem a good venue for Mickelson's high-ball power game - if the wind doesn't blow. But many fairways aren't as open as he'd like at the 300-yard mark. Mickelson finished T-35 there a year ago.

"The problem for me there is there is so much water that pinches off the tee, and I'm just not going to hit 3-woods off the tee and play that course strategically the week before Augusta," Mickelson said. "And then when it gets windy and I'm trying to hit high balls for Augusta and it requires a low knock-down shot, it's not going to work.

Having not seen the course, I'm not sure this is more of a statement about the set-up or the design. Knowing Phil's love of Rees Jones' oeuvre, I'm guessing the latter.

A Fresh Perspective On Tiger's Golf Digest Masters Cover Appearance

Thanks to Steve Elling for catching the now-heavily re-Tweeted and epic newsstand placement with Tiger's much-talked about appearance on the Golf Digest Masters cover. See, all you cover haters, it really was worth it just for this. (The original Tweeter of the photo seems to be in hiding now.)

"A president's critics always go for the golf joke because it irritates people at a gut level."

Slate's John Dickerson defends Barack Obama's love for golf in light of Newt Gingrich's recent criticism. Yes, someone is defending golf!

Obama should resist—and, regardless of party, we should all want him to. The presidency is a prison. Your every move is watched and tended by the Secret Service, your opponents, and the media. Even when you're "having fun," you do so in quotation marks. At parties or a baseball game, you're watched to see if you're having a good time. If you play basketball, your on-court demeanor is analyzed for clues to your leadership style. You don't drive. You can't keep a diary (they can be subpoenaed). You can't smoke (the kids are watching). You can't take a stroll through your old neighborhood. All of this distorts the mind.

The golf course is one of the few places a president can escape the pressures and physical limitations of the office. George W. Bush was smart enough to have a ranch that allowed him to get out from under the scrutiny of the press. He was inside a perimeter, so the Secret Service could back off a little. You don't have to like golf to recognize that being able to walk in relative freedom and hang out with friends is an obvious pleasure and escape. The more tightly someone is confined, the more necessary it is to escape. One of the great problems for any president is a loss of perspective. A distraction, even for a moment, from the constant and attention-shredding duties of the day is one way to gain perspective.